martin-lozano-21818a22 martin-lozano-21818a22 https://www.youtube.com/channel/drmartinlozano https://www.youtube.com/channel/drmartinlozano mailto:mlozanoqf@gmail.com googlescholar

1 Introduction.

Welcome . If you are reading this document, it is because we have agreed or we are in the process of agreeing that I will supervise your project, thesis, or dissertation whether it is research oriented, or consultancy based. In short, I will simply use the word project from now on. I am confident that we can develop an interesting project, and I have high expectations about your overall performance as an individual and more importantly as a team. You should be confident that I have more than enough academic credentials, experience, and interest to help you in this process regardless the scope, approach, and the topic of your project. You can find my full and updated academic curriculum here This is the Zoom link for meetings: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/9209945512. Once again, welcome.

The objective of this document is twofold: (1) explain the supervision process, and (2) explain the project contents and structure.

Our common goal is to produce a solid and interesting project which meets the university quality standards, my own expectations as supervisor, and your own interests as students. I expect the best academic performance that you can achieve, and perhaps even more. You must expect me to support you and guide you in the best way possible to achieve our ultimate objective which is to produce a high-quality project and communicate its significance with authority. For this purpose, you also must know that from now on, part of my time, my knowledge, interest, and experience are currently at your service. I enjoy the supervision process because I always meet extraordinary people that creates an interesting project in a subject that I find interesting.

You should know that there are several kinds of projects or thesis depending on their scope, originality and contribution to the professional or academic field. We can broadly differentiate between undergraduate (not very common), master, and PhD thesis. All of them should aim to contribute to the academic and/or professional field at differentiated levels, and represent clear evidence that the candidate or the student is an expert in his or her area of study. However, the level, depth, impact, quality, and significance of that contribution depend on many factors. These include: the aspired academic degree, the time availability, the academic rigor of the designated supervisor, and/or the general quality standards of the university and/or academic department.

Your project represents a way to differentiate yourself among the rest of your colleagues in the job market as you may have the same degree but different project topic. I will try to clearly communicate whether you are meeting my own standards because this will influence the mark you will officially receive in your academic records. In any case, you can ask me directly whether you are meeting my expectations and I will answer as clearly as possible. This may be obvious, but you should know we (students and supervisor) are not competing, we are collaborating to reach our final objective which is to end up with a high-quality project to submit on time. I will also try to keep a respectful, professional, and friendly relationship to facilitate our communication and contribute to reach our final objective.

Your thesis project is also an opportunity to develop or engender your current research skills. Research skills are not exclusive for consolidated researchers, leading authors, and academics with a PhD degree. Research skills are also very important in the current job market and industry which nowadays has become highly competitive and demands professionals with a formal approach to address and solve problems following a modern and innovative scientific approach. Problems that already exist in the industry, and those that do not exist yet. A professional with the ability to learn, innovate, and develop applied research projects, are very valuable in the job market. You are expected to be good at learning well and fast by yourself, and gathering research skills can help you in this respect. It is not easy to gather research skills alone and isolated from academia, this is why one typical way to get them is by letting experienced researchers train enthusiastic students.

2 Frequently asked questions.

Here are a few frequently asked questions that most of my students have about their projects:

  1. Who is supposed to propose the project topic? There are several ways to proceed in this respect. One typical way is that students declare their main interests; then I can propose several alternatives; and we can discuss until we define the most appropriate project for you. Proposing topics that you as a student do not want to do is also a valid way to define the project topic. Another way is that students pick from a list, so programme administrators can match students and supervisors.

  2. Are there any restrictions or limitations in terms of the topics you can supervise? Not really. I can supervise a wide variety of consultancy oriented or research projects in the area of business, economics, statistics, data science, finance, management, its combinations, extensions, sub-areas, and other more specific and newer topics. I have a marked preference to select a quantitative approach in the area of economics and/or finance, but in short there are virtually no restrictions in terms of the topics I can supervise.

  3. Are we supposed to produce a very long and complicated R code? Your project, and more specifically the empirical section that will lead to your original results will most likely be developed in R given the quantitative nature of the project that I will try to pursue with you. However, I strongly believe that the project contribution is far more important than the methodology or the specific way or software to produce results. Therefore, your thesis could be intense in computer programming or not. This will depend on the project itself, our discussion, your ability to do computer programming, objectives, and scope. A project that relies on computer programming is usually more ambitious and with a more interesting contribution as it has virtually no barriers or frontiers in terms of data analysis and reaching original findings. In short, the answer is: it depends.

  4. Is there a minimum and maximum page limit for my project? You should look at the official guidelines for this. In my personal view, the extension is mostly determined by the achievement of the project objectives and not in the number of pages. Page number is not necessarily related with project quality, but I understand it can be used to meet some standards dictated by the academic programme. In any case, I will decide whether a specific section in your project is sufficiently developed or not. Just as a reference, John Nash’s thesis was 26 pages, and had two references in the bibliography. It is also true that few pages can be a sign of a lack of a deep analysis. In short, I will clearly inform you in case you are falling too short in terms of page limit. If I do not do that, then you have the obligation to ask.

  5. What would be your very best recommendation for us as students? Inform me regularly about your progress, and incorporate all my feedback in your progress. Read this document on a regular basis. Keep quality standards as high as possible. If for any reason I take too long to answer you back, please insist.

  6. Do you ask for weekly progress reports? Not really. I rather prefer to ask for reports based on tasks or tasks progress. The process is rather simple: you send me a draft, I give you comments by email and/or Zoom, you incorporate my comments, you send me a new draft, and the process start again. This is the Zoom link for meetings: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/9209945512.

  7. Are we going to write our project in MS-Word? There are several alternatives to write your project. You can use MS-Word, Google Docs, Overleaf, R Markdown, or any other \(\LaTeX{}\) compiler.

  8. Are we going to have the same individual mark? Not necessarily. I may include auto and co-evaluations to know more about how is your view about the team members.

  9. More in future versions of this document.

3 Project structure.

Your project will be formed by one single document. A typical project structure is: title, abstract, introduction, literature review, methodology, results, conclusion, and references.

3.1 Title and cover page.

The title normally changes and evolves during the supervision process. A good title has the relevant keywords that can help the reader to understand quickly and unambiguously what the project is about. A good title represents of the whole contents. It is very common to start with one title and end up with a different one before the final submission. This is fine if the title really reflects the contents and the approach of the project. I recommend you to propose an early title as soon as possible and let it change depending on the progress of your work and depending on my recommendations.

Your document also needs a cover page that includes your names, the name of your program, the name of your supervisor, the name of the university, and date. You probably have a cover page template given by the academic programme or university guidelines.

3.2 Acknowledgments.

This section is entirely optional. Sometimes students are interested to write thankful notes for parents, friends, boyfriends, girlfriends, pets, and occasionally for his or her supervisor or other professors. You can write a unique section as a team, or divide it as one acknowledgment per team member. This is the only section that obviously needs no revision at all by myself.

3.3 Abstract.

An abstract is a catchy ultra-summary of 100 to 200 words that synthesize the entire document including the main results or findings. This is why the abstract is normally written and rewritten close to the end of the document production. A good abstract is concise, succinct, and should be enough to get a pretty good and clear idea about what the research project is about without the need of reading the entire document. In fact, I argue that a potential reader can decide whether to read the whole document or not simply by reading the abstract. An abstract is not a summary of the introduction section, it is not an executive summary, it is rather a synthesis of the whole document. I also recommend you to include a JEL (Journal of Economic Literature) classification system because it is a standard method of classifying scholarly literature in the field of economics (finance is a field within economics). This system is used to classify articles, dissertations, books, book reviews, and working papers in EconLit, and in many other applications. For further descriptions and examples, just Google the JEL Codes Guide.

An abstract includes what is your paper/project about, why it is important, how did you do it, what did you find, and why your findings are important. The following is an example of a nice 95 words abstract by Fama and French (1993). Please note how effectively the authors communicate a very important contribution using a clear language and a straightforward writing style.

This paper identifies five common risk factors in the returns on stocks and bonds. There are three stock-market factors: an overall market factor and factors related to firm size and book-to-market equity. There are two bond-market factors, related to maturity and default risks. Stock returns have shared variation due to the stock-market factors, and they are linked to bond returns through shared variation in the bond-market factors. Except for low-grade corporates, the bond-market factors capture the common variation in bond returns. Most important, the five factors seem to explain average returns on stocks and bonds.

After reading this abstract, everyone would be clear about whether to continue reading or not depending on their own interests.

3.4 Introduction.

The introduction typically contains and outline of an unresolved issue or problem to be addressed and the added value of your own approach. It also highlights the relevance of the topic, contains a description of what is known about the problem, a research question, aim or objective. Introductions tend to move from the general to the more specific and introduce readers to the research presented and its significance by providing some background context.

It is important to include the main results in a very early section of your research project because you must assume that the reader is lazy and impatient throughout your writing process. If you incorporate this assumption about your reader in your writing style you will be alright as this makes you think twice whether your explanations are clear and complete enough. Please be aware that if you include a synthesis of your results in this section, then you will have to complete the introduction in a late stage of your project. The introduction should be (ideally) nontechnical, appealing, engaging, and it should motivate the reader to continue reading your research paper with a marked interest and enthusiasm.

In this section, it is convenient to define relevant terms or concepts included in your title, and describe your plan of organization (a brief description of the following sections). Defining the relevant terms or concepts is important because it will help you as an author to put the reader in the right context and prepare him or her to read your project. You should not assume that the reader understands very well the main terms or concepts, so this is why you are expected to elaborate them in the introduction. The relevant terms or concepts are normally incorporated in the title, so you can take the introduction as an opportunity to explain in detail your own project title. The introduction shapes reader expectations of what they will find on reading your project, so take care to deliver on what you say you will do in the introduction. This is why this section is the second most important part of the whole document (the first one is presumably the abstract), so you have to be prepared to review it and polish the text as much as necessary, be prepared to edit, delete, write, rewrite and even start over from scratch.

I recommend you to read introductions of other published research papers because this can help you to write yours as you might copy the writing style of experienced authors and replicate it in your own work. When writing the introduction, make use of words and phrases to: indicate coverage: examines, presents, provides an overview, outlines, analyses, explores. And indicate the key message: demonstrates, highlights, provides insight into, argues.

Common mistakes that you must avoid in writing this section includes:

  • Take extracts of other sections of your project to fill out the introduction. This is not recommended because the text will end up being a Frankenstein document. Write original and unique paragraphs in every single section of your dissertation.
  • The introduction has many different writing styles. This is not recommended because it will be difficult to read and follow. Sometimes students work on a shared document and this is fine if you review and make sure the writing style is consistent throughout the document because otherwise your document will be very hard to read and understand. The reader should have the sense of unity or cohesion when reading your project. This is important because you are writing a document as a team, but the reader is an individual, so the document should be written in a very consistent style as if it were written by one single person.
  • Remember the introduction is not a summary of your work. The introduction is rather an opportunity to engage the reader and reveal why he or she should spend time reading your project. You are writing for your reader, not for you, not for your supervisor.
  • Confusing introduction. Sometimes you add many topics in the introduction that do not fully correspond to your own main objectives. If this happens, then the reader will be confused about what is your project about, the reader might misunderstand what is your main point. In order to avoid this, make sure that your introduction contents are very clearly and closely related to your main objectives. This will help you to avoid inconsistencies and confusions.

3.5 Literature review.

In the literature review you discuss how your own problem has been tackled in the past by other researchers and how your approach fits, complement, innovate, or extend the current knowledge or evidence about the topic. The literature review provides a rationale for your research in terms of what has been done in the past. In this section you should demonstrate that you understand very well what others have done and that you are clear about how your own view and approach differs from theirs.

In the literature review you explain how your project makes a clear contribution. You will need to support your own work based on some references related with your project and these references are expected to be published in recognized research papers. Not only that, I recommend that your references are from high-quality journals according to the Chartered Association of Business Schools (three stars and above), or SJR (Scientific Journal Rankings). Published papers in high-quality journals are not the most difficult to understand, they are simply the more interesting, the ones with significant impact in the field, the ones that concentrate the most significant contributions, and the ones in which you will find the most influential authors.

To establish your credibility, your literature review will typically need to do at least some (if not all) of the following effectively.

  • Demonstrate that your research is rigorous and up-to-date by engaging with seminal and current work.
  • Summarize relevant bodies of work and evaluate their strengths and weaknesses to demonstrate your critical understanding of the literature.
  • Point out gaps in the literature or identify problems, issues remaining to be solved.
  • Highlight key issues essential to your own research.
  • Synthesize the main themes and arguments of a particular body of literature.
  • Produce a brief historical survey or other context information in order to situate your research.

At the beginning, you might have some difficulties at finding those papers that you need to include in the literature review section. This is perfectly normal, do not feel too bad about it. There are many ways to start your search for literature including the university electronic library. However, my first recommendation here is to use the Google Scholar site (it must be the “scholar” site), this site allows you to look for published papers in a specific time frame, find papers of specific authors, and even look for papers that has a specific paper as a reference (forward looking). This is, if you find a good 2020 paper, you can ask Google Scholar to show 2021 to 2023 papers that includes the 2020 paper in their reference section, which is nice and useful. Please spend some time on Google Scholar and get familiar with this search engine designed to help researchers.

An additional difficulty you might face is to know which paper is good and which one is not for your literature review. My recommendation here is to start with a simple search, download a few documents and read them. You will soon realize that you may understand some things and you might not understand others, but that is fine and you have to keep reading and see how other authors have approached similar objectives like yours. Reading others will help you to see how they explain their own research and you could learn from that as well. When you find a good paper for your own, then it is a good idea to look at that paper references section (backward search, older papers); and look for other papers that have reference to this good paper (forward search, newer papers). Bear in mind that this section is not supposed to include all that you read; you have to incorporate only the relevant papers and references that are important to understand the nature of your own project.

Common mistakes in writing this section includes:

  • Write about every single document that you found. This is not recommended as you are expected to include the papers that are more closely related with your own objectives or approach. The journey to find the right papers is not that important, what is important is the definite set of papers that are clearly related with your own research project.
  • Start your literature review with a 1900 paper. This is usually not recommended because you will never end. Plus, we assume that the main relevant set of papers of a given current topic already incorporates previous years literature. A typical rule of thumb could be to read papers published in the past 10-15 years or so.
  • Remember that every paper referenced in the project must be in the reference section and every paper listed in the reference section has to be referenced in the project. So please do this double check.
  • Avoid using the footnotes as a substitute to the reference section. In fact, avoid using footnotes in general, if it is outside the main body, it probably does not deserve to be included at all.
  • Avoid (if possible) organize this section according to a historical approach. The time is normally not an appropriate approach because this is not a section about the strict chronological evolution of a given topic. Instead, this is about how a specific problem has been addressed in the past: you can start commenting about a 2016 paper and then a 2010 paper, and then a 2018 paper and that is fine. Therefore, you will have to figure out a logical way to present and comment about the selected papers, and this logical way is not necessarily time. The challenge here is to find out this coherent approach to develop your literature review. In Spanish we use the word hilo conductor to refer to this specific issue, just Google it.
  • Another common mistake is to superficially report what you read. This is because reporting your reading requires a minimum intellectual effort. Instead, you must summarize, compare, contrast, analyze, explain, and evaluate others’ published work. This is more challenging and requires some research-skills.
  • Copy and paste from others research papers must be avoided by all means. Your dissertation requires you to produce original text all the time. If you consider you are incapable of writing original text, then this is a clear sign that you have not read enough.
  • There are many low-quality journals out there that accept almost any kind of paper for publication for a fee. The point here is to incorporate in your project a set of serious authors, serious journals. Also, if you are interested in getting published, I normally recommend my students to get away from these predatory journals. Google the concept of predatory journals to see the kind of damage that they cause to research and academia in general.

  • If you do not find relevant literature, then the most likely reason is that you have not performed a good search. In other words, there is relevant literature out there, you just have to learn how to find them. Also, you might be looking for a topic which is so specific that you will have difficulties finding papers. In this case, try one degree less specific and you will find interesting literature.
  • Avoid using references such as blogs, newspaper extracts, isolated quotes, Wikipedia, and other kind of source that do not follow a strict scientific method or do not follow a professional peer-review process. You are free to read those, but you are not expected to trust them to the point of incorporating them as a reference in your dissertation.

3.6 Methodology.

Your thesis will most likely include an empirical test, a valuation, data analysis, or model estimation so the methodology will provide a detailed assessment of the quantitative methods and data used in your project. The methodology section includes the model presentation, assumptions, equations, functions, and relevant estimation techniques. Math notation must be properly formatted by using the insert-equation feature available in MS-Word, markdown or in \(\LaTeX{}\).

The equations are supposed to be well formatted like this: \(E_0=V_0N(d_1)-De^{-rT}N(d_2)\).

This section must be very clear to the extent that someone could be able to replicate your own results simply by following this section. If this condition does not hold, then this section could be considered as incomplete. The methodology section also includes the description and source of the raw data used in the empirical exercise. You will have to indicate the software used and the version; in the case of R you are supposed to use: R Core Team (2023). R: A language and environment for statistical computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria. URL https://www.R-project.org/ It is not compulsory to reveal your R code but you are expected to provide all your methodological procedure and explain it very well.

3.7 Results.

This section includes tables, plots, interactive plots, diagrams, graphs, and other complementary tools to show the results that will help you to meet your initial objectives, contrast your main hypothesis, and answer your research question as clearly, as explicit, and as complete as possible. This section will show the quality of the execution of the empirical exercise and methodology. Please bear in mind that the whole project should have clearly defined numbered sections and subsections. The equations, tables and figures should be properly numbered as well for an easier reference.

If your abstract is good enough, people would most likely scroll down your paper to see your results. The design of your tables and graphs is expected to be as good to the extent that they would virtually need no explanation. In other words, they are expected to be almost self-explanatory and they must be free of any sort of confusing elements. The main challenge of this section is to organize your results in such a way that your reader will perfectly understand how these results help you to meet the original research question, evaluate your original hypothesis and objectives. Sometimes your introduction has to be altered given your results; this is OK as long as this contributes to strengthening your project by making it more consistent.

Normally, I recommend trying to think in a comic-oriented approach. This is, you will have to produce your figures and tables in such a way that they could be able to tell the story that you are interested to tell. After producing the main figures and tables in the right order, then the process of explaining the results (or tell your story) becomes easier.

Typical mistakes in this section are:

  • To include tables or plots that are difficult to relate to your original objectives. This will create confusion because the reader will not understand how these results help to address the main research questions.
  • Include results that are difficult to read because the font is too small or the format is hard to understand.
  • Include tables or plots from other authors. You are expected to show the main original results in this section, so taking results from other authors sends a very wrong signal to the reader.
  • Fail to explain and interpret every single table and plot. You must remember that you are the one who is supposed to explain your results, not the reader.

3.8 Discussion of results (sometimes discussion is a separate section).

This is important because it will allow you to elaborate your analysis further and deeper. I usually argue that the uniqueness of your project relies on your approach, and the quality of your project relies mostly on the quality of your analysis, and I believe this section is where most of the deep analysis is done. Remember your reader is supposed to be lazy, so your reader needs you to explain your own results in an extremely detailed and specific way, so do not expect the reader to interpret your results by himself or herself, or read your mind. Interpretations, implications, explanations, and discussions are supposed to be elaborated in detail in this section. I insist that the quality of your project will rely very much on the quality of your discussion of your own results, their implications, and the significance of your own and original findings with respect to the current literature. Here, my advice is to always read your work out loud, to yourself, parents or even to your pets. This is the best way to put you in the shoes of your reader. By doing this, you will clearly identify what you must delete, delete again, change order, write, rewrite, edit or simply start over again. The worst that can happen here is that your reader fails to understand you, and if this happens then the reader will no longer be interested in your work and will most likely consider it wrong or not worth the time.

3.9 Complementary results (you may or may not need this).

These are normally useful to incorporate some extra consistency tests to evaluate whether your results are consistent and robust with different data-sets or different parameters in the experimental design. Not every thesis needs complementary results. Also, these might not represent the main core of your results, but they will complement your thesis and strengthen your conclusions.

3.10 Conclusion.

Here you draw together your key findings and tell readers what you think it all means. The conclusion will summarize your main results and elaborate on the future steps that you or someone else could take in order to explore your research question further. The conclusion is a good opportunity to move from a detailed to a general level of consideration that returns the topic to the context provided by the introduction, so in the conclusion you close the circle that started in the introduction. You might also suggest further research; this could reveal some good understanding about the scope, extensions, and limitations of your own project. The conclusion is not the same as the abstract. The conclusion might not make full sense by itself if you read it isolated. However, the abstract can be fully understandable without the need of reading the rest of the document. The conclusion should answer the question: what did you learn?

When reporting on your findings, however, do not merely list or repeat them from previous sections. Doing so gives no insight into the meanings you attach to these findings. Rather, draw together all findings into a coherent whole, and think about the weight and significance you attach to these findings in terms of your research objectives or questions. As not all findings will be equally important, you might want to think about them in terms of a scale of significance. Ask yourself the following questions.

  • What do I consider most important about my findings in general and why?
  • Which findings seem to be of greater or lesser significance and why?
  • Are there any specific findings to which I want to draw particular attention and why?
  • Is there anything unusual about any of my findings needing special mention and why?
  • Has my methodology or anything else affected my interpretation of findings and is this something that needs to be discussed?
  • Any other questions important for your research?

3.11 References.

This section should include every article, paper, book that you use to support your project. In the same way, every referenced article, paper, and book used in the project should be in the references section. There are several formats you can follow to write this section; my simple recommendation here is to try to mimic the format of your own journal article references. Or better just follow the APA style, there are many online resources that can help you here. In fact, the university library can provide useful advice in this respect, just contact them, and ask for it.

Every project is different, but I am confident that this structure fits practically any case. This structure allows some additional freedom compared with the traditional chapters. This structure also allows pursuing a publication, participation in research seminars, contests, or awards.

4 Writing style.

Writing should be a constant process – start now – do not wait until you have done all your research. Also, remember you must be prepared to edit your writing several times before it is ready.

The writing style is important because you might have a great idea but if you fail to communicate effectively nobody will take you seriously. Alternatively, you might have a regular idea but you are very convincing and you communicate it very well then everybody will listen to you. This section can help you understand the required writing style you have to use in your project.

Avoid using several and mixed verb tenses. I recommend you to use the simple present tense in most of your document. Keep the writing simple, straight, and clear. Complicated writing is often confusing. Sometimes the student thinks that a complex text is more formal or elegant and this is the opposite. Complex writing makes you sound small-minded. Simpler text is often more difficult to achieve but it is preferred in terms of clarity. Use past and future tense only in very limited cases and avoid contractions.

Use the active voice. In English, readers prefer the SVO sentence sequence: subject, verb, object. This is the active voice. For example: Passive sentences bore people. When you reverse the active sequence, you have the OVS or passive sequence: object, verb, subject. For example: People are bored by passive sentences. You cannot always use the active voice, but most writers should use it more often. In short, the more you read the better you write. In academic writing this applies very well, your writing will improve considerably if you consciously read high quality published papers. My recommendation is to use active voice.

Detail. You are expected to write detailed explanations of what you are doing in your project. Most of the times when I review your drafts, I insist on this point several times. You must motivate and introduce every idea, explain it fully, elaborate on the nature of your objectives, and be very explicit in your methodology. You must show how well you understand the topics in your project and a detailed discussion helps you to achieve this objective. Consider the following example: (1) I grow lots of flowers in my backyard; (2) I grow 34 varieties of flowers in my backyard, including pink coneflowers, purple asters, yellow daylilies, Shasta daisies, and climbing clematis. Clearly (2) is more interesting than (1) simply because more details are provided and I can even imagine your backyard very clearly.

Clarity. This refers to the quality of coherence and intelligibility. You need to make sure your idea is clearly communicated. Sometimes sentences and paragraphs are not very well connected and this leads to some confusion about what is your main point. In this case, you will have to review your text and make sure every single sentence and paragraph are effectively contributing to communicating the idea correctly. Write use instead of utilize, near instead of close proximity, help instead of facilitate, for instead of in the amount of, start instead of commence.

Reduce wordy verbs.

  • From is aware, has knowledge of, to simply: knows.
  • From is taking, to simply: takes.
  • From are indications, to simply: indicate.
  • From are suggestive, to simply: suggests.

Coherence. This is about being logical and consistent in your writing. It is worthwhile to constantly question yourself whether your paragraph or section makes sense or not. If not, you will have to work on your coherence.

Cohesion. This is about forming a united whole. Sometimes four team members contribute to writing a specific section and it turns out that the section lacks of cohesion because it looks as different views and unarticulated paragraphs. You will have to make sure your text is in fact a unity. Words and phrases can control and order the logic within a paragraph’s argument. You can link ideas using words that show a logical relationship: therefore, however, but, consequently, thus, even so, conversely, nevertheless, moreover, in addition, and many more. Whatever its form, an intra-paragraph transition should be unobtrusive, shifting readers easily from one topic to the next.

Flow. Your reader should be able to follow your line of discussion, see how you are moving your discussion from one topic to the next in developing your overall point of view. In other words, paragraphs should be properly linked to ensure coherence.

There is an interesting and relevant recommendation by Gary Provost about academic writing. This summarize very well how you are expected to write:

This sentence has five words. Here are five more words. Five-word sentences are fine. But several together become monotonous. Listen to what is happening. The writing is getting boring. The sound of it drones. It’s like a stuck record. The ear demands some variety. Now listen. I vary the sentence length, and I create music. Music. The writing sings. It has a pleasant rhythm, a lilt, a harmony. I use short sentences. And I use sentences of medium length. And sometimes, when I am certain the reader is rested, I will engage him with a sentence of considerable length, a sentence that burns with energy and builds with all the impetus of a crescendo, the roll of the drums, the crash of the cymbals–sounds that say listen to this, it is important.

5 What might go wrong?

Many things might go wrong, but if we know them and consider them in advance then this risk can be properly managed (or avoided). One of the main risks is that you start losing interest in your project because of your current job or any other sort of new or unanticipated responsibilities. The kind of commitment that you have with your team and your supervisor demands a constant and a high interest throughout the whole process. My recommendation in this respect is that you always keep track of this document to evaluate your progress in a timely manner and always keep me informed about your progress.

You can also get frustrated by not meeting my quality standards, or by not understanding a specific topic, or by not overcoming a specific academic challenge. I am not going to actively promote negative feelings like frustration but if it happens, then you should overcome this as well and as quickly as you can. Frustration is not good, but if you feel it then try to transform it into an extra motivation to achieve the objective. Do not let frustration paralyse your progress, and do not let it last for long. I consider there is no challenge that you cannot overcome, you just have to allocate the right amount of time and effort. Ideally, you are supposed to enjoy the process of writing your project and overcoming challenges feels good.

You could even ignore this document and that is unfortunate because this document is designed to assist you in the whole project. This document could contribute to work more efficiently, avoid potential risks, and help you to get things on the right track.

On the positive side, many other things might go well. I am confident that the negative issues can be easily and quickly be managed and you can progress well most of the time.

6 Checklist.

Below you can find a useful checklist to bear in mind while working on your thesis project.

  1. Keep me informed about your progress and do it regularly. The best way to approach me is by email.
  2. Make sure you are clear about what you are expected to do in the short run and in the medium run. This guide can shed some light about this.
  3. Make sure you fully and clearly understand my feedback, meetings agreements, comments, recommendations, advice, etc. If you do not understand this, then you have to ask me for clarification. Contact me for any concern you might have.
  4. If I ever take longer than expected to answer an email, or review a draft, please insist and kindly remind me.
  5. Do not wait for further instructions passively. You are expected to ask for new and further instructions in case you do not know what you are supposed to do.
  6. Always keep quality standards high for your own work and overall performance.
  7. Read this document on a regular basis as a guide and reference. You are expected to be able to achieve some sort of independence by following this guide closely.
  8. Never get frustrated because there will be no challenge that you can overcome with the right amount of time and effort. If after all you get frustrated, upset, or angry do not let it happen too frequently and do not let it last for long.
  9. Follow number 1.

7 Conclusion.

I hope you find this process a rewarding learning experience for you. Remember that part of my time, my knowledge, interest, and experience are currently at your service.

This document took 0.01 minutes to compile in Rmarkdown, R version 4.2.1 (2022-06-23 ucrt).

References.

Fama, Eugene F, and Kenneth R French. 1993. “Common Risk Factors in the Returns on Stocks and Bonds.” Journal of Financial Economics 33 (1): 3–56.